If We Shadows Have Offended
by djarum99
Summary: Mr. Gold divines Regina's secret weapon, and the battle for love begins and ends; title stolen from Mr. Shakespeare. Five chapters. Thanks so much to those who have left reviews - the kind words are very much appreciated :-
1. Chapter 1

The stars keep their silent council above his sleeping town, exhaling stale midnight, the breath of ten thousand frozen days. Ten thousand, two hundred and fifty-one, to be exact, and Gold is nothing if not an exacting man. He has no magic here, but moonlight holds power and pain holds more; the veil lifts, bares the truth he has betrayed. A river runs beneath Main Street, muddy gray and lifeless, though in the days since the savior's arrival its current quickens with each passing day. _Haunts and echoes, dust and shards..._The ancient bones of the world lie shattered beneath Storybrooke's bland façade, turrets and peasant hovels, castle keep and miller's wheel.

He makes his way home from a dungeon masquerading as a jail cell, a beast masquerading as a man, Moe French's blood still dark on his hands.

_The price of guilt - his own? Her father's?_

Yesterday, the question didn't matter. Yesterday, he knew she was gone.

Those stars, they've begun to move again, and their dance heralds the battle he's waited so long to command. Leaning against the café's low railing, he lifts his eyes to their waltz, marks the constellations, so commonplace, so foreign: the Serpent, the Wolf, the Hunter, the vain Queen on her throne. The cup lies cradled close to his chest, fragile as an infant's skull; its retrieval had cost him dear. Regina has revealed her endgame, and that has cost him more. As she'd surrendered his prize through the sheriff's steel bars, there'd been no mistaking the snake-tongued flicker in the depths of those dark eyes. Triumph, blazing too bright to mark so small a victory. In her eagerness to swallow his pride, she had surrendered knowledge far more precious.

_We shall see..._

Belle lived.

Belle, the only weapon in this world or the last that could make the witch so certain she could bring him to his knees. He knew now, beyond skin, beyond bone...the Queen had lied, all those years ago, had taken the woman he'd mourned so long as a pawn to draw his rage. Rage that sang now in his veins, rage he could ill afford on the brink of this world's unraveling. The Dark One bares its fangs, howls its hunger, capers wild on the edge of his soul. He'd fed it sparingly over the years, bits of necessary cruelty, the leavings of his carefully wrought curse. Enough to keep its ghost alive, enough to keep it ready. Ashley's fear of losing the baby he'd never intended to take, Emma's grief in losing Henry, the dread of anyone desperate enough to dance with a tailored devil. All carefully forged maneuvers designed to cut his dark spells' knots. _He'd_ been so careful, until yesterday, when the Black Queen placed Moe French in his path.

_Love is the most powerful magic..._ Hate runs a very close second.

He passes the schoolyard, pavement shimmering above fields of wheat ripe with a distant sun - he can almost feel its warmth, feel hers. Stars swirl, darkness surges, and the cane flashes once, twice, three times against his ravaged thigh; the pain is exquisite, a living, snarling thing chained by blood to serve his purpose. An image of Regina torn and butchered slowly fades into the shadows, and he gathers control, limps on.

A rush of black wings and harsh cries announce his arrival..._a kindness of ravens, a murder of crows..._bound in service as portents, even in this world, of the transformation to come. Home, his Dark Castle folded and crushed into brooding gothic frippery. He makes a halting ascent to his second floor bedroom, and strips off his armor of fine-spun wool, slips naked between silk sheets.

_Comfort, he'd asked the Queen for comfort, knowing full well he'd spend twenty-eight years walking on broken glass._

Gathering his cunning's threads like a cloak, he wraps himself in what passes as magic in this dreary dying town. Belle lives, and he has nothing left to lose to power, to deal-making, to the Queen and all her wrath. Tomorrow, he will call in favors, take back what is his. Sleep does not come, but for the first time in decades Belle does, and he allows it. Soft hair, yielding flesh, the heat of her, like molten gold. A woman spun of joy and fire, transforming all she touched with a tender wild-rose alchemy...and he had scorned her price.

Storybrooke transmutes the essence of all those who dwell within its walls; what has she lost to his sorcery, to him?

_Love has killed more than any disease..._ He knows Belle would abhor it, but he will kill for her.

xxxxxx

She dreams. These concrete walls mask mildewed stone, and the sunlight threading through her window's mesh is the wrong uneasy color. Outside the door lies a hospital corridor, white tile and sickly green walls, a vague memory from days ago...weeks? Months? She dreams of rusty bars and a demon guard, loyal to a heartless Queen - of a spinner's wheel keening golden dirges, her promise of forever to a lonely mage with serpent's eyes.

There'd been whispers, even when she was a child, that her feet never quite touched the ground. Maybe that is why she's here, maybe the lies the queen tells are true. She doesn't believe that in the dark, where the mist always clears. Her dreams sing, and every word is sharp and bright.

She remembers learning to drive Gavin Thorn's red Mustang (and a first time in its cramped backseat), her high school graduation, her job at the library, and the day that she tried to leave town. No one, ever, leaves this town; she knows this now as surely as she knows her own name, Gabrielle Suzanne French..._Belle, daughter of Sir Maurice de Beaumont, Baron of the burning Frontlands._ She remembers her father, a mediocre florist and hopeless businessman, standing mute beneath Regina's basilisk gaze as she claimed his moonstruck daughter.

She dreams of her brave choice, clutching a whipcord arm clad in dragonskin, deciding her own fate.

She remembers, knows, that she belongs to Storybrooke, but she dreams of a land where magic breathes, where she has left her heart.

xxxxxx

Twenty-seven favors called to an accounting, thirteen palms crossed with silver, one dead nurse - _the glint of the gun in her hand, his knife caressing her throat like a lover_ - and he stands at the door of Belle's prison. Emma presses behind him, muttering something about multiple felonies and wiping blood spray from her cheek; he waves her back with a sweep of his hand, and just this once she obeys.

"Who could be worth all this, to you? Who's in there, Gold?"

"I don't know," he says, and draws the bolt, steps into the dark.

She's crouched in the far corner, just a shadow, thin and feral. He steps closer, as close as he dares, and hears the sharp intake of her breath.

"You're the man from my dreams."

Her voice is toneless, flat, not the music he remembers, but he asks the question anyway. He's already so far off his artful map that her answer cannot matter, but he must know, _needs_ to know.

"What was my name, in your dream?"

She rises, stepping into a ribbon of weak filtered light, and the sight of her comes closer to killing him than anything has in five hundred years. Emma's fingers grip his shoulder, but she's uncharacteristically silent, a witness to their tableau. The girl - _a woman now, she's somehow older, marked by his own cruel lash, his love - _steps closer, her lips moving around a whisper. He hears the Dark One's mocking laughter, feels the world's cursed fabric rend and fray.

"Rumpelstiltskin. Your name was Rumpelstiltskin."

xxxxxx

"I can see him, beneath your skin, but he had a sense of humor, wicked, and I don't think you laugh. Did she steal that, too? Can you take it back?" Passing streetlights taunt him with glimpses of her face, full lips forming a line that isn't Belle's, blue eyes that hold no warmth, but her slender fingers have gripped his coat sleeve since he took her from that cell.

"Not my most useful attribute, but I will be taking it back." He knows there were drugs on Regina's orders, doesn't know what they mask and what is simply his own design, the work of his monstrous curse. The woman beside him isn't Belle, she's her jailer, and he has no magic to free her from that.

"You threw me out - will you be taking me back as well? Where are we going?"

She remembers, his name and his sin; perhaps she is not so far from his reach.

"I thought I was protecting you, I didn't know that she...I thought you were dead." She nods, blank and distant, so far away, but she slides across the vinyl seat until their bodies touch and hope plunges its knife in his heart.

"I know. She told me, so many things, because I couldn't fight back. I don't think she had anyone else, you see, and she needed to tell her secrets. Such terrible secrets. And then, I dreamed the truth - I have to sort it all out, the dreams from the other stories. Where are we going?"

Emma glances back from the front seat of her cruiser, and he knows there's only one answer, knows the sheriff will object.

"Home. I'm taking you home."

xxxxxx

Emma does object, strenuously, but Gold brushes aside her arguments with the ghost of his familiar sneer. He's different somehow, softer, and she's lost in his labyrinth of evasions and their rescued victim's resolute stare.

"I want to go with him. It's the only way I'll be safe from her."

Emma hits the brakes, pulls into the curb. "Who is 'her'?" Who put you in there?" Gold's arms slip around the woman beside him, pull her close to keep her from falling.

"Regina. The Black Queen."

She'd helped Gold bundle her into the squad car, leaving behind a barricade of flimsy yellow tape to protect the hospital's basement crime scene - a crime scene that no longer existed. When they'd finally emerged from that grim locked room, they had found no record of the woman currently cradled in Gold's arms, or how long she had been held there. No trace of the nurse's body, no blood, no knife, no gun.

Gold hadn't batted an eyelid.

She didn't know how he'd known the code to open the door marked "exit," didn't know how he'd discovered the woman imprisoned below, and hadn't a clue who she was. Emma Swan hated not knowing above all things - hunting down truth was her forte, and ever since she'd arrived in this godforsaken town truth had eluded her at every turn.

Maybe Henry was right. Maybe on some level she wanted him to be. Ashley was Cinderella, Mary Margaret was Snow White (and her mother), David was Prince Charming (her father - she's not so comfortable with that idea), the nuns were fairies, Leroy was a dwarf, Dr. Hopper was really a cricket and she was meant to save them all from Regina and an evil curse. At least tonight, she'd managed to save someone.

"Ooookay. One condition - you see Dr. Hopper in the morning. He's a good man, and you've obviously been through something traumatic. Are you sure you can trust _him_? I can keep you safe, find you somewhere else to stay."

"I'm sure."

There's something in the way Gold touches her, like she's made of porcelain and he can't trust his hands; something in the way she looks at him, steadfast and unafraid. This woman, whoever she is, does not seem so easily broken. Emma sighs, puts the car into gear, and heads for the pink Victorian that houses a man she can't pin down. Henry has begun to think Gold might be on their side, all evidence to the contrary.

Emma doesn't like contrary evidence, and she doesn't trust Mr. Gold, but she helps the woman up his steep front stairway - ("Belle. My name is Belle.") - and drives back to the hospital in a haze of pre-dawn gray. She's learned to trust her gut, in foster homes and alleyways and a dozen Bad Life Choices; somehow, in that mystic place beneath her eighth rib and the ninth, this feels right.

In the parking lot, she's halfway out of the car before she remembers the latest addition to Henry's book, a story she could swear hadn't been there before, and an illustration of a beautiful girl in a sky-blue flowing dress. Belle. Beauty and...the Beast. The picture only shows him in profile, a wild-haired creature dressed in tight spiked leather, gazing at Belle swept up in his arms as if she'd hung the moon. Emma had thought at the time that it looked like some mutant front-cover cross between a sci-fi novel and a lurid Harlequin romance.

Now, she thinks the love-struck Beast bears an alarming resemblance to Storybrooke's own dastardly Mr. Gold.

She slams the cruiser's door and by the time she hits the lobby she's engulfed by something like fury. The world is spiraling out of control, reality is shifting beneath her feet, and there's a smarmy doctor waiting who'll make a most convenient target.

Emma _hates_ not knowing, and she's reached a point where answers have fangs, and the questions are all spelled backward.

"Lousy metaphor, and me without a broadsword. Or an eraser. Good morning, Dr. Whale."


	2. Chapter 2

Belle is here, alive, wandering through his parlor with its antiques and sleeping magic, wearing wrinkled green hospital scrubs. He's a former master of dark magic, his reputation in this world worse than all the Borgias' combined, and he hasn't thought further than bringing her here. Bringing her home. Fists clenching in black leather, he stands just inside the doorway, watching, struck dumb.

Belle knows what she needs, and ever after he is grateful.

"May I take a bath? I'm so cold."

She's an ice maiden, this woman who wears Belle's face, not a flicker of emotion behind those wide blue eyes. Hot water makes perfect sense in his current mindless state, and he leads her up the stairs, his cane abandoned to the need to break her wintry spell. He draws a bath in the claw-foot tub, finds towels and lavender soap he'd bought because it smelled like her. From the nuns, to torture himself when he'd still thought her dead.

She waits patiently, silent, and when she lifts her arms he steps close to help her out of her shirt, loosens the drawstring of her pants, strips her bare. His hands are shaking, but he gives the act no second thought; he might be caring for a child, for Bae. She gives no sign of fear or shame, taking his arm to step into the water. Her skin is flawless, innocent of scars - _shark-eyed priests, the whip, the scourge, none of that had ever happened_ - but he can count her ribs beneath its moon-glow, and his rage kindles fire, leads his body to betray him. He turns to the door to hide bared teeth and his arousal, but her voice calls him back. _Her_ voice, or at least its faint echo.

"Don't go."

"I can't-"

"You can. You're afraid now, but you're not a coward. You weren't being a coward then, not completely. The Queen told me her secrets, and I know why you sent me away. There's no magic here to lose."

Water splashes faintly as she moves behind him, and he fights the urge to run, from the ghost of what she was, from the guilt of her unmarked skin.

"I've always been a coward, and I sent you straight to her dungeons."

"I survived, and I forgive you. You did what you could to save us all."

"I did it because of the future I saw in that hell-spawn's eyes. Didn't fancy my prospects beneath her boot heel." There's another reason, someone else he lost, yet another source of shame, and caring about what she might make of that is still something raw and new. He presses his palms to the paneled door, knowing that she binds him here, that he can't leave this room.

"Belle, you don't know what I've done. You should be afraid."

"I know enough - the Queen made sure to tell me."

More splashing, and he imagines water beading her shoulders, the pale column of her throat. The Dark One is ecstatic, screaming at him to take her, but her next pronouncement stops him cold.

"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."

She gives this improbable sentence a foreign lilt, a strange rolling growl, and he can't help himself, turns back to find her...smiling. Hot water. He'll have to add that to his grimoire.

"What?"

"John Wayne. The person I was supposed to be - here - she loved westerns. She watched them with her father on Saturday nights."

The smile lights her eyes once more, too briefly, she's beautiful, so beautiful, and the fire in him pools in the depths of his heart. He takes the cloth she hands him and draws it over her back, her breasts, her face, washes away his sin. The ends of her hair trail the water's surface and she sighs, lifting her arms to him again.

"I'd like to get out now. I have to sort it all out, sift out the lies, and I'm tired. Will you help me?"

For a moment he allows himself to believe that he can, that he is the man she needs, that thirty years might not prove too cruel for penance. He fumbles with towels, dries her hair, wraps his hands so her flesh can't summon the enchantment that will reduce him to ash. There's a robe he seldom uses hanging from a hook by the shower; he guides her arms through its sleeves and twists a clumsy knot in the sash. She has to gather it at her thighs to avoid tripping as he leads her through the connecting door to the bed - his. He tells himself it's a matter of the spare rooms' linens, of dust and long disuse.

Belle curls beneath his sheets in the middle of the mattress, and falls asleep in the space of a minute. The armchair under the room's bay window will leave him lame by morning, but he settles in to keep watch, eyes searching her face for terrors, the taint of ogres, abominations, anything he has power to slay. When she wakes two hours later she tells him of dreams, not nightmares, of her father's kindness, her mother's loss, of that place where he's the monster and she alone could see the man. She cobbles together her puzzle, and each piece brings her closer to whole. By noon she's sleeping again and he's stretched beside her atop the duvet, a weary dragon protecting a maiden no longer bound by frost.

He wonders if she'd have been safer, if he would, if he'd left her locked away. The curse lies in tatters, and the battle is almost upon them - Belle will be there to fight for, and he's never felt less a coward, and never more the brave man. He's never felt more afraid.

It's time to saddle up.

xxxxxx

Belle waits a week to return to his bed, because he needs the time and she needs to be sure. Not of love, but her own fragile balance. She has one foot in this world and one in the old, but she lives here, at least for the time being. Every morning finds her tidying her mental landscape, tucking stray facts into their proper drawers and schooling her tongue to this world's language. The operative lingo of computers, motor vehicles, and microwaves - necessary knowledge for the apocalypse to come, as well as for simpler things like putting food on the table and shopping for things to wear in addition to his gray cashmere robe. Not that she objected to the robe, with its faint scent of sandalwood, the musk of his skin. She wears it every night.

She has to keep her balance, and every time he touches her, thoughts swirl like bright jewels in a child's kaleidoscope, memories fighting for alignment and pattern until they settle on those that hold him. Green-gold scales and amber eyes, Armani suits and Gucci loafers. He'd always disguised himself in finery, and here, as in his Dark Castle, he seemed to favor silk shirts. He's different in this world, layer upon intricate layer concealing the man she knew. She knows he's still lonely, and that here, her kiss can't steal magic's fire. It might mean they'll both burn, but that's a price she'll gladly pay. This town, this world, still feels so very cold.

He takes her out into Storybrooke; the stores are small but much too bright, filled with people who peer around corners and point fingers at Gold's new plaything. He's cultivated his reputation here, again, very carefully - but she notices hints that it's beginning to change. There's a shop with a sign that bears his name, rents to collect, a conspiracy to join, but he makes a few calls and the other players come to them. Merchants, traders, weavers and kings, remembering their names; a change is rolling through Storybrooke, and she knows Gold is behind it, spinning the wheel, pulling the thread. Dr. Hopper comes, and the town drunk she'd once met in a tavern, a mechanic reunited with his children, a schoolteacher and banished princess, and her love who was once strong and true. Now, he's confused, befuddled, but Gold says he's finding his way.

"Taking his own sweet time about it. The boy always was a bit slow." Belle lifts an eyebrow and he frowns, finds something to do in his study.

A woman appears at their door, bold and predatory, and Belle isn't surprised when Gold whispers that she'd once prowled the night as a wolf. Ruby brings them dinner in white boxes, and winks knowingly at Belle behind Gold's slender back. She winks back, and the she-wolf laughs, genuine and warm.

"Call me Red. I remember you," she says, "we met once, in the woods."

"You wore a scarlet cloak." Belle remembers that day, too, the day she'd left him, the last moments she'd spent in sunlight before the Dark Queen took her captive; she's glad nevertheless to meet another of the moon's lost travelers. Someone she'd like at her back, when the curse comes tumbling down.

When Gold leaves the house on mysterious errands he won't share even with her, Ruby comes. She plays music on her iPod, and sometimes persuades Belle to dance. When Gold opens the door to find them laughing, hips swaying and words bright on their lips, the look in his eyes makes her think he would take her right there on his Persian rug. Hunger, heat - she wants to drink it all down, feel his fire in her bones. Brazen, for a Frontlands girl and even for Gabrielle French - but in this and certain other respects she thinks this world might hold the advantage.

Emma comes with Henry, listens to her son chatter at Belle's knee of true love's ever after - listens with discomfort, but not outright disbelief. When Henry opens the book to the page that bears her own likeness, Belle takes it gently from his hands, shakes her head, and tells him that their story isn't finished. Not yet. Henry studies her face and Gold's with eyes too wise for a boy of ten, and then grins like it's Christmas morning, like he's just been given a pony. Or something much more precious; Belle can only imagine how lost he's been, a little boy alone with his faith.

The sheriff pulls her aside and asks if Gold's been a gentleman, if he's done anything to frighten her or overstepped his bounds as...guardian? Friend? Emma doesn't seem to know, and she doesn't seem to like that much. Belle decides to cut to the chase.

"I loved him then, and I love him now. He's been a perfect gentleman, and frankly I'm ready for that to change."

"You loved him - then? He's morally, well, questionable at best, and you've only been out of that cell for a week. Does Dr. Hopper know about this?" Emma looks like she's ready to haul out her handcuffs, and Belle isn't sure if they're for Gold or for her. She's had quite enough of locks and keys, and anger rises, a slow steady tide.

"I know much more about him than you do, Emma Swan. Dr. Hopper knows I'm sane, if that's what you're asking. It's time to listen to Henry. Time to listen to your heart. That book? It's the truth, every word, and you know it."

Henry is watching, and Gold, eyes calculating and wary, his arm around Belle's waist; she can feel the tension in him mimicking the familiar hum of his magic.

"I don't _want_ to know it. But maybe you're right. Heaven help us all." Emma sinks down into a wingback chair covered in brocade that had once been curtains Belle tore down to welcome spring's thaw. "What do we do now?"

"Now, dear Emma, we end it, and heaven's got naught to do with that." Gold's voice is all sharp edges, sword blades and smashed mirrors, and for a moment Belle sees him in dragonskin, his fingers tipped in claws.

"How, exactly, does that work?" Emma takes Henry's hand, and holds on like he might float away.

Belle feels Gold's arm tighten, and another jagged corner snaps into place, another piece of his soul she's never known.

"We need more time. Two days, three at the most. For Emma to truly believe, and for my son. He's coming home."

xxxxxx

Belle has waited a week to return to his bed, or, to be more precise, to renew their deal for forever in terms written and bound by blood. Gold has slept in a room down the hallway where he'd taken refuge since her first day here; she still sleeps between his black sheets. A week will have to be time enough, because she's waited thirty years, because she's still so cold, because there's an apocalypse in the making. Because he has a son, and finally trusts her with that story.

Their guests leave and the fire falls to embers as he speaks of the man he was, and when she takes his hand she can see the forest, smell the sweat and rot of his village, feel the pain of a father whose world ground him into the mud.

"The magic, the darkness, I let it take root in my fear. Without it I'd been less than nothing. And then I let it take my boy - at least that's what I told myself." Sitting at his knee, she rests her head against his thigh and traces the scars beneath taut wool, feels him shudder.

"And what was true?"

"I lost him to weakness, to myself. Magic can only shape what is already there, what it finds within your soul. My power is bound to the Dark One, but magic simply...is, neither good nor evil. I welcomed the Dark One with open arms, and he's a most persistent guest."

"And when you took me? You were more than lonely. What was I for?"

His mouth twists, and again she sees the creature he was beneath the trappings of cool restraint.

"I'd watched you, before your father invoked my name. Your soul, it was...luminous. Human, and flawed - you have a tendency to make naïve assumptions, and you're far too fond of meddling - but still, it shines. I thought there might be some hope of transference. And, if not, simply to possess such a thing...I'm a collector, dearie. Light and dark only exist in tandem, and they both hold sway in me."

"But then, there was love. And my meddling."

He doesn't answer, and she rises to her knees between his own, cups his face. "A hopeless habit. I just can't stop."

When she kisses him, the second time, his eyes drift shut and his face doesn't change, but she feels something inside of him break.

"Belle, don't, I don't want-" but he's lying, pulling her against his chest, parting his lips for her questing tongue. This world's memories instruct her in how to make him moan, scrape her teeth across the pulse in his throat, her nails across the base of his spine. Her body answers that it knows this magic, too, but she stills against him, pushes away her false past. She wants this to be real, needs this to be her, with him, needs him to understand her dilemma.

"I wanted you, then, when I wasn't sure what wanting meant. And, I remember falling in love with a boy I met in AP English. I remember...but I know it never happened. You need to know this is my first time, and I need to make this ours."

"Maybe it shouldn't be. You don't know what I'll have to do, before the curse is finished."

Firelight glitters in his eyes and the room beyond lies in darkness; she can feel the power in him, midnight and sun in cobweb harness, vying for control. She holds her breath as the walls drop away and she's back in the castle, in that cold dungeon cell where he'd lied for redemption, lied for her to save them both. She knows he still has the white china cup, believes she's always lived in his heart.

"You're wrong. Love has a sister. Her name is Faith, and she can kick some magic ass. Choose, Rumpelstiltskin. Choose me."

He doesn't move, remains frozen above her for so long she dreads his answer, and then his hands are on her, gripping her shoulders, forcing her upward to find his mouth. There are words, between each of his kisses, soft enchantments against her flesh, wards against the darkness beyond the four walls of the room. He hasn't lost all sorcery - her clothes disappear, her shirt in a flurry of buttons scattered across the parquet floor, her jeans at his urging as she stands weaving on her feet. She starts to protest when he bats her hands from his collar, looses speech when he lifts his head to her breasts.

He's found magic untouched by the curse, in the relentless silk glide of his tongue, his touch, in the sweet coil of heat twisting deep within her that tightens at his command. Down, and down, until he finds the source, parts her thighs to taste her deep. She buries her hands in his hair, and the feel of it, like warm summer rain, sends her reeling beneath his onslaught. Falling, to land in an awkward huddle halfway between the couch and floor.

"Shhh, love, hush, it's alright, you're alright," and she knows he's afraid that she isn't, that the tears on her face are from doubt or pain, or worse still, from regret.

Her body is still throbbing, pulsing strong where she wants him to be, and she doesn't know how a woman expresses such things no matter which world she was born to. She opts for action, since speech has fled and she's found uncommon strength in her hands.

His shirt's buttons join hers on the floor.

Eyes half-lidded but fixed on her face he lets her take the lead, and she pushes him back to the cushions, fumbles with his belt.

"Help me."

"At your order, milady."

He grins, baring wolf's teeth and glinting gold, but freezes when breath fails her at first sight of his scars. A snaking purple line twists from flank to knee, evenly spaced hollows forming a crescent at each side, the mark of monstrous fangs. When he tries to struggle upright, her first touch keeps him in place, fingertips followed by her lips and tongue, tracing the path of his shame.

"Gods, Belle," and he sounds like he's drowning, tangling his fists in her hair for salvation when she takes him in her mouth. He pulls her back hard enough to make her wince, lifts her up and over until she straddles him, slick, open, and he's hard against her, waiting.

"I'm going to hurt you, nothing for it. This way you have control."

The rasp and want in his voice tells her he's lost all but shreds of his own, and the power is heady, a wildfire burn - _an echo of what he must have felt, when magic blazed inside him._ Kissing him again, slow and deep, she lowers herself to take him in, uses the sound she tears from the back of his throat to dim the bright flare of her pain.

She doesn't find it again, that new ecstasy he drew forth with his mouth, but she can feel the way of it in her body's searching, the design for what they can build. It's enough, this first time, to watch him fall apart. His hands shake as they guide her awkward rhythm, but he allows her to set the pace, gives her time and lets her take him. It's enough, to see the hope in his eyes, to feel his heat spill inside her when he tenses and grants its release.

_By my blood I summon power..._

A memory, or his stolen whisper...it makes no difference, the fire is real and hers and theirs, and finally, the cold is banished. Boneless and warm, blissfully warm, she takes his hand to climb the stairs and bring him back to his bed. He nudges her first into the bathroom, the shower, a blur of water spray and languid kisses, the rough pull of the towel as he dries her skin. He's allowing himself happiness, and she clings to every moment, until she's in his arms beneath silk sheets and exhaustion draws her down.

Tomorrow, they'll face his demons. Tomorrow, they'll start a war. Faith had better be ready, and come packing her biggest gun.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Regina wakes from a dream of her mother, bathed in sweat and the rank scent of shame. More often than not, it's Cora's ghost that haunts her midnights, and she isn't entirely sure what that means. Her nightmares ought to be of her father, dead by her own loving hand. Or of a valiant stable-boy, dead by the sin of loving Cora's prize possession. Throwing back the duvet, she strips off damp satin and lace, heads for the shower to scrub herself clean. As water pounds and steam rises, she tries to summon Daniel's face, but his image is lost, long lost to time, and all she can see is a mocking symmetry, her mother looking back from the mirror.

Her hand closes on a bar of soap, and she hurls it true to shatter the phantom. There are more important things to worry about, and Regina's no stranger to nightmares. She's proud mistress of their creation, and it's time once more to warp the landscape and paint illusion with her cruellest brush. Emma Swan has found her faith, and Storybrooke has shed its blinders. The people remember their lives, their loves, and they remember the Black Queen. Rumpelstiltskin, that prancing, arrogant fool, had finally found his balls with both hands and stolen back his mewling strumpet. Her next to last ace in the deck he had stacked.

It's time to snip those roses in the budding.

Regina dresses for the day in black Escada and four-inch stilettos, tints her mouth the deepest blood-red. The glass in her foyer reveals only a woman who holds the world in harness; it's her own treacherous heart that betrays her now, recoiling from what she must do. She wrings it dry, climbs the stairs to Henry's room, gathering purpose with each step. This is her fallback, her safeguard, what she's always known could happen. The blame is theirs, Snow White and her trollop offspring, Rumpelstiltskin's and his flawed curse.

_A parent must always do what's best for their children._ She will do what must be done to win.

Henry is not in his bed.

Nothing of his is missing, his school backpack tossed in a corner, and the coat she bought him last week (his old one is now too small) is still draped across a chair. She's told him a thousand times to hang it properly, to wear it when the weather's cold.

Cold rage engulfs her, and she claws at the tumbled bedclothes, tips the bookcase to scatter his treasures. _How dare they, how dare _she,_ this is Emma's doing, she knows it._ The little slut has stolen her son, and for that she will pay. The curse had demanded a sacrifice, and now a second to restore its hold. Blood calls to blood, and Emma Swan's shattered heart can only strengthen the magic of her son's.

_Find the thing you love most, and kill it..._

xxxxxx

The day before Armageddon declares itself another sunny small town morning, and Gold wakes as he always does, clambering up the cliffs of his past. As a pathetic man, a clumsy monster, through the years and centuries in which he'd learned his arcane craft. Honed it, on the stones of time, carved a mask of runes and riddles, until the creature who lived behind it could barely recall his human pain. Becoming Mr. Gold had merely added more layers, a polished veneer - but through it all there had been Bae, and then there had been Belle. Embers of remembered love, and they had kept his soul alive.

_Love is layered..._

When all that he is lies bare before her, will she run?

Belle is sprawled beside him, all warm flesh and tender breathing and the scent of his lavender soap. She rolls to find him when he shifts to see her face, and he hardens against her thigh. Gold wants, Rumpelstiltkin wants, to coax her into soft moans, an undoing sweet and slow, to pound into her body fierce and hard, to draw blood with his teeth. She stirs, a drowsy smile and blue-eyed wonder and he's lost in this second-chance morning, in her.

"I love you," she says, and he'd freeze the earth on its axis if he could.

He rolls to cover her and she opens for him, parts her lips and wraps her legs at his waist. This time he won't cede control, because she trusts him, because in this he can prove that she can. Ghosting her skin with fingertip tracery, he sculpts the flare of ribs, the swell of her breasts, glides inside her to find a rhythm.

She isn't the woman he remembers, not yet. The curse still holds her soul captive, and his, wrapped in tendrils of a magic older than all the worlds, older than even their nameless gods. A curse whose cruelty is woven of love's wisdom, an ouroborus paradox only true love's sword can slay. This, moving inside her, the pagan ritual of skin on skin, this is as close as he can bring them to truth.

"_Let go, Belle."_

Lowering his head he draws a nipple into a swirl of tongue and teeth, her body arcing upward to find release that begins and ends with him. A crescendo of touch, the final in a flick of his thumb and she clenches around his fingers, nails raking his back for purchase as she falls.

He gathers her into his arms, soothes her through the descent - it's too much, this aching hope that never again will he fail to catch her. _All things have their price..._ This is his, to lie with this woman who fills his heart, to know what he stands to lose. Too much, and he buries it deep beneath the Dark One's hunger, beneath years spent crafting his curse to redeem his cowardice, to reach this place. The end is coming, and he must be ready.

Grinning, wicked, he allows the darkness to surface, conquer weakness, banish doubt, and licks her from his fingers. She smiles, and takes him apart with a whisper.

"There you are - I remember, I remember _you_, Rumpelstiltskin..." A heartbeat, those words a shining knife, and she's slashed through all his cunning, invaded his last refuge.

Their second coupling is less gentle than the first, but this is new to her and her body is tender, tight. Tight and hot, for him, and it's all he can do to slow his thrusts and beat down the urge to bite. She nips his throat, tentative and then harder. When he flinches and pulls back panting, she searches his face, smiles again.

"I won't break."

"I might," he says, but she's given permission, and he surges deep until his bad leg seizes and she pushes against his chest, curls her knee against his hip and takes him spinning over the edge, sideways, tangled and awkward. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder despite all efforts at restraint, but there's no blood and she's laughing, crying, kissing his eyelids, his mouth. She tastes of tears and the salt of his own skin, and he could live another thousand years without ever leaving this bed.

He'd pay any price for this.

xxxxxx

Ruby arrives with Dr. Hopper, calling him "Archie" and putting her considerable charms to full scarlet use. He doesn't seem to mind, at all, and Belle leans close to Gold's ear, asks if this, too, is love that first grew elsewhere.

"No, dearie. Fresh from Storybrooke's own garden. Something new."

He still looks and sounds like Mr. Gold, but his voice has Rumpelstiltskin's cadence and the arm she holds is bowstring tight. Today, she's to go with Ruby and the doctor, to a gathering of the town's awakened citizens. The streets have been crowded for days, with people sharing their stories, finding old friends. Not everyone is in agreement about what they hope the future will hold. Among poor and wealthy alike, there are some who've become accustomed to this world's mundane magic. And, "poor" in Storybrooke is not synonymous with "hardscrabble living and in danger of starving" in their home land. Belle meant to do something about that, with the aid of a few kings and queens.

She isn't eager for a return to washboards and dank privies, but Belle longs for her father as the man she'd known, and Moe French remains a florist. She'd gone to see him, just once. He'd stared at her amidst his roses, and said he and his wife, dead twenty-five years, had never had any children. _"You look a bit like her, though, her eyes were blue, like yours. Best go see Dr. Hopper, miss, get some help to straighten things out."_

Gold had told her what he'd done to Moe French, and why.

He'd made tea, shoulders braced and averting his eyes, his movements elegant, precise, measuring Darjeeling and her response. Belle had wept, as much in sorrow for him as for the man who wore her father's face. She'd forgiven him, because he'd kept the cup, because he's certain she'll leave and still, he offers the story. She'd forgiven him, but she wouldn't forget. The darkness in him is human, here, rooted deep and whispering lies of power, necessity, of what will fall to its sacrifice; she knows he still believes.

True love's kiss can break any curse, but he had yet to choose.

Maurice de Beaumont's daughter was born of warrior barons and their briar-rose women; she could choose to fight for his soul, or leave. Belle had chosen forever three decades prior, and she had chosen love. She was prepared to go to war.

She might need to search his dusty attic, for some sort of battlefield talisman. Or a weapon.

Magic is a thing of smoke and mirrors, a chimera bound by playful physics. The price for Belle might mean his ending, or black-winged horror in her eyes. The price for his son...he cannot hope for absolution, only that Bae will remain safe, whole, that his life will not be hostage to his father's base betrayal. So much remains unknown, with the plains of war arranged before him, all the pieces now in place. So much depends on love's vagaries, on hearts he cannot control.

The hands of Storybrooke's clock have stopped again, at 8:15 on this strange spring morning.

Rain falls from a cloudless sky, a drift of diamonds beneath a frozen sun; spectral mountains pierce the horizon's dull shimmer, and faultlines ripple beneath sidewalks, through storefronts and pavement. The worlds have begun to bleed. Only those with a role to play have risen from their beds; the rest remain in sleep's netherland, a small mercy spun by his hands. Gold gathers the faithful, the damned, and leads them into the changeling wood. The undergrowth sparkles with little chinks of leaked enchantment, and the trees have found their voices in the keening of the wind. Gold wonders if the others can understand the words, if it's too soon. The trees sing a warning, a tale of tragedy and woe - just another of the curse's grace notes, if their music falls on deaf ears.

Belle walks beside him, serene and empty-handed. If this image is all he has to carry with him into the abyss, he'll go willing. Another of her gifts freely given, and maybe he can believe, after all, in this woman's wildfire practical magic. He has always believed in Belle, even when he lacked courage to claim her.

Henry walks beside his mother, trusting, a hopeful open book. The boy has always believed, in their story, in her. The wolf-girl and her grandmother follow close behind, Ruby's fierce spirit draped round her like a cloak, and the old woman bearing a shotgun - always the pragmatist, that one, in both worlds. The dwarf and his firefly lover with her habit cast aside, the compassionate cricket, the Prince and his bold bride; all chosen by his curse to bear witness, to mark their battlefield parameters with true love's iron and salt.

The tower clock spring breaks with a distant whine, and the last threads unravel. They've entered the empty realm of ciphers, the limbo In-between. Above, the sky is an ocean of emptiness, a mirror reflecting nothing. The trees still, their branches wither, and now the forest holds nothing but bones and black feathers, save this outlaw band of travellers bound by joined human hands.

A clearing opens before them, and then a vortex of emerald light. Rumpelstiltskin's heart hasn't beat for the past fifty yards, but it stutters to life when the boy appears, his son, his Baelfire, and he's running, ignoring the anchor of pain in his leg. Bae is just as he was at that moment when clear-eyed faith and courage failed him, when his father let him go. His knees give out as he pulls his son close, and his face is wet, his tears a libation for godless ground.

There's only time for a whisper, a plea for trust when Bae can't possibly give it, for understanding in a whirlwind daze.

"_You followed me, Papa, I thought you wouldn't, I thought it was too late-"_

Bae doesn't know of his cowardice, believes he honoured the terms of their deal - it's another betrayal, but now is not the time or place for that truth.

Belle meets his eyes, shakes her head, and helps them both back to their feet.

"When it's over," she says, and that's a deal he will keep if he can.

If he can't... "Promise me, Belle. Keep him safe, no matter what happens."

"I promise, Rumpelstiltskin."

Her gaze is enough to render him blind, a mirror for his monstrous flaws, his love. Bae's glance darts between them, understanding dawning sweet with his smile, and this moment is a whip, its lash all a man could hope for and all that he can lose.

Love's price.

Regina appears without fanfare - one minute their circle stands empty, and the next she's there, fingertips sparking magic and her dress in raven tatters. He can feel his own power kindle and burn, drawn into this empty place by the temptation of lifeblood, of death.

The Queen has built an altar of granite hatred, marble rage, conjured from earth and ash. Her fingers grasp a blade that flickers between Swiss kitchen cutlery and fine-etched baselard; her glamour's veil is wearing thin. Leather bites at his own human skin, and his vision blurs, then sharpens. A slithering crawl across his flesh, and he wears the monster's scales once more - Bae is crying, he can smell it, but there's no more time, no time...

The Dark One doesn't know what's coming, claws impatient at his spine.

Behind him, the crowd grows still, and he steps backward to Henry's side, slips an arm around him and pushes - hard. Emma gasps, swears, but Regina sweeps in on crow's wings and triumph to pull the boy into her arms.

His cue.

"What you love most, your Majesty, as promised."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

All that he loves stands behind him, and love's betrayal is all that can save them.

Emma is reaching for her gun, he knows without turning his head, and the others are pushing closer, reaching to take him down. Belle screams his name, a plea, and he can hear Baelfire sobbing. Their pain is a threat he cannot allow, and he casts a veil of silence, freezes his followers where they stand.

The Queen stands draped in magic, the midnight raiment of believing she's won.

"Always dependable, dear Rumple, and I'll honor my side of the bargain. You and your son will continue to enjoy such comforts as your curse allows. Do you want to remember all of this? I'm feeling generous today - if you like, I'll erase the last week as a bonus. You've served me well."

Henry struggles in her arms and then stills as she lifts him to the altar, raises the knife.

Rumpelstiltskin would spare the boy this memory, but he needs him awake, needs Henry's voice to add to his own.

"A most gracious offer, to be sure, but don't be too hasty, your Majesty. My curse demands the dearest price, as you are well aware. Your heart must hold its fill of love before you wield the blade."

He steps forward, his boots swirling magic and the trees' mournful ash, flattens his palm against Henry's chest and meets the Queen's cold eyes.

"This won't do, it won't do at all. Remember your father, dearie, remember that my curse must be fed by true love's sacrifice. Pure, untainted. Remember the day I brought him to you, the day you first held your son."

"_Mom..."_ The boy is dazed, pleading, but Regina refuses to meet his gaze.

"You're not my son. You never loved me."

"But he did. He did. _Remember_."

He knows how to recognize a desperate soul, how to sink his teeth into pain's throat and shake until fangs meet bone. Knows how to sing the words soft, relentless, his lips nearly brushing Regina's frost-pale cheek.

Only sacrifice can free them, or weave the spell anew. The Queen's sacrifice, or his own. The curse demands an answer - without it, those in its cobweb thrall are doomed forever to wander the wastelands. His namesake blade snakes cold against his ribs, etching deadly secrets through its leather sheath, his own scaled flesh.

"_The scent of the baby's hair, milky sweet, the feel of his skin, warm satin, the way he looked at you, so trusting, remember...his first smile, first laughter, first words, first steps, his tears, all for you, his mother, remember...he's two, believing you tuck the sun in bed each night...he's four, running into your arms..."_

"Stop this, stop it now, you malevolent little-" Regina's hands are shaking, and the air around her flashes with needlepricks of lightning, threads of sapphire light. At her back, the lifeless trees awaken, sere branches writhe to stir the wind, and the forest breathes once more, exhales. Wayward gusts lift the Queen's hair, tease her skirts, and her body begins to shimmer, a candle flame guttering in the wake of a rising storm.

"_You nursed him through fevers, told him stories of his grandfather. He showed you all his treasures, once upon a time, asked you all his questions, and you answered, you answered, and you loved..."_

"_You bastard. I can't, I can't..."_

Her dagger flashes in a slow-motion arc, arrowing down like a pitiless hawk to pierce its living target. Staggering backward, he pulls Henry from the stone and into his arms as his legs fail him and he stumbles, collapses across the boy's body. For a moment, he thinks that death will be kind, a mute and gentle thief - until Regina grasps the bloodied hilt and wrenches her blade from his chest.

His magic falters with his heartbeat, and he can hear the crowd behind them shouting, Belle sobbing, Bae's struggle against the hands that hold him fast.

"Don't think you've won. I'm taking you with me, Rumplestiltskin."

Regina lifts the dagger to strike again and Henry slips from his arms, grabs her ankle, pulls, and the woman who once called him son falls howling onto her own weapon. Perhaps it's magic that finds its mark, his, or Regina's own; perhaps it's merely fate's caprice that holds her knife true, drives it home.

_A kindness of ravens, a murder of crows,_ the sound of a thousand beating wings and the wail of all hope dying. The Black Queen dissolves into dark-winged mist, clawing holes in what's left of the sky, dragging this world with her and all its feeble stars...

xxxxxx

Moldy straw beneath his boots, torchlight and leather, smooth against his own scaled skin; he's returned, and all is as it was, the kingdoms restored and his soul in ashes. He rages, snarls, hurls the fury of every magick he knows to blaze and die against the bars, but the fairy's spell holds true. In the end, hands slick with his own darkling blood, he remembers - someone still owes him a favor.

xxxxxx

It's an hour or more before Emma finds him, following the thread of his wheedling voice through the labyrinth of her parent's...dungeons? Not an idea that fits with what she knows of them, in this world, which still isn't nearly enough. His summons had nipped at her ear in the middle of explanations jumbled with hugs from tiny women with glittering wings, a host of people both fey and familiar, her mother's bold laughter and her father's strong arms, a giddy celebration that didn't feel quite right. There's a vague, niggling sense of things left undone, but she's uncertain of her role here, and his whisper cast across her mind's surface had felt like a skipping stone of relief.

_Come, free me,_ and once again she is the key.

Literally, it seems. When she finally reaches his cell, she kneels beside the door, cautiously - he's not a man, not here, and she's more frightened now than she'd been through all of Storybrooke's strange last days. He's crouched just out of reach of the flickering light, and she remembers that day at the hospital, the day they'd rescued Belle.

"Mr. Gold?"

He's grinning with teeth that are far too sharp, eyes hidden beneath a wild-wind tangle, his fingers lacing lightning into cat's cradle patterns of fire. She's still wearing her gun, and her hand wanders to the holster of its own accord. When he moves to grasp her wrist, his skin shimmers in the torch's glow and he leans close to breathe an answer.

"Yes, dearie. And, no. You know my name."

"Rumpelstiltskin."

"Princess Emma. I'm so pleased to finally make your acquaintance."

The words are sarcastic, a sibilant hiss, but his touch is oddly comforting, and she feels her heartbeat slow. He's wearing what looks like ragged snakeskin, stained deep red across his chest, and his hands - his hands are bleeding, painting runes on the sleeve of her shirt.

"I woke up inside a tree," she says, and face to face with a wounded sorcerer it sounds rational, a conversational comparison of apocalyptic notes. "Why are you...here?"

"Emma, sweet, strong Emma, that's a story for the ages, for Henry's book and a long winter's night. Now, you must free me, let me find her. You must bid the spell be broken."

"To find Belle? Where is she? And, I'm not at all sure that I should. You were dangerous there, you took Henry, and here, you're..."

He laughs, high-pitched and eerie and like nothing she's heard from Mr. Gold. Like nothing she's heard anywhere, a sound that belongs to the shadows.

"Here, I'm something far worse, something you can't begin to imagine. The Queen took Belle before the curse, locked her away in a place like this one. She's..." He lifts his hands to the bars, black talons scrabbling to find the right phrase, and settles for what Emma thinks just might be honesty.

"I'm hers. I have to find her. My son, my Bae - he's safe?"

"Yes. He's with my parents, and Henry. He's confused, but he knows that you...you saved us."

In the end, he had, though she suspects Rumpelstiltskin is at least in part their destiny's maker. Someday she means to have that story, but at the moment, she'd like nothing more than to smash her fist into his face. He took Henry, pushed him into that witch's arms - that knowledge gleams certain, sharp and bright.

"Speak the words and let me go."

It isn't a command, it's a plea, and for the first time she sees his eyes, terrifying and inhuman and filled with...fear? Hope? Without understanding the impulse, she lays a shaking hand against his cheek, feels love's burn beneath flesh and bone, and knows that he speaks the truth. Punching his lights out may just have to wait.

"OK, then...and wow, the weird just keeps on coming. What, exactly, am I supposed to say?"

He moves back from the spikes, grinning, expectant. She could swear the cell behind him twists and shivers, like the air above a fire, like a hot desert wind. Turning him loose has to be number one on her Top Ten List of Bad Ideas, but she already knows what she's going to do, and somehow, she knows the words. _Deep breath, and-_

"This cage was forged by command of my blood, and by my blood I release you."

Something inside her awakens and stirs, and there's a firework crackle as wood begins to snap and splinter.

"Yeah. Weird doesn't begin to cover-"

The door swings open and he's beside her in a heartbeat, too close. Closer, and his breath ghosts her neck, she catches his scent - sweetgrass and leather, blood-copper and desperation.

"Henry, your son, he's alright?"

She hadn't expected that.

"Yes. Shaken up, but he doesn't remember...everything. I don't understand, he was born there and I was so afraid he wouldn't come back with us. Was it your doing?"

"No, dearie. It was yours. Love _is_ the most powerful magic."

There's such longing in his voice, those eyes, such longing to believe. Someday, she'll learn what's behind that - her curiosity, it seems, has followed her into this impossible world.

"Then...I hope that you find yours, Rumpelstiltskin. Give mine to Belle, when you find her."

"When I find her. Hold on to your son, Princess. Hold tight. And, as for that favor you owe me-"

"I set you free."

"And I merely asked. Favors owed to me are more..._formal_ arrangements. You must promise me, dear Emma, that you will protect my son. At any cost, no matter what may happen."

Before she can answer, before she can stop him, he flicks his nail across her wrist, draws a line of beaded scarlet. Wrapping ravaged fingers tight against her skin, he mingles her blood with his own, seals the bargain and her scratch with a single stroke of his fingertip. It tingles, and he had no need for magic, not in this, not with her.

"I give you my promise as a mother. I will protect your son."

What happens next is exactly what she expected, and he's gone in a swirl of red-moon dust; the dark is thrumming and the air is electric and she's...totally and completely lost. The dungeon's tunnels are a foggy maze, but Henry is here, and he's waiting, for her. She conjures an image of his face in sunlight and finds her way at a loping run.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Thunderheads scuttle above rolling hills, and at first, he believes magic has failed him, abandoned him in this empty place. But...Belle is here, he can feel her warmth, a steady beckoning flame. The north wind gathers strength and he lifts his head, catches her scent in the promise of rain.

All that remains of the Queen's soaring castle is a single hawk-eyed gargoyle, marble wings and fanged snout barely clearing the grasping mud. The ruins of a miller's cottage stand in place of vicious spires, a pile of crumbling stones and mortar - the birthplace of Regina's rage, and the site of her soul's final rest.

On the hillside above the mill's winding stream, Belle stands beside a mound of fresh-turned earth. He knows what she has found courage to do before he sees the shovel, half-hidden at her feet by late autumn's wilting grass. She's buried the horror she found here, whatever was left of the Queen, beside a stone inscribed "beloved father," and a worn slate path to nowhere.

Belle is crying, has somehow found tears to hallow their graves, and he has never loved her more.

Love that aches, deep as Regina's knife in his chest, and he's at her side in an instant, reaching to draw her close. Belle's arms lift in answer...and she slaps him, hard enough to send him reeling, backwards and graceless, until his back scrapes against rough bark. An apple tree. Of course.

"How dare you terrify me like that. How dare you do that to me, your son, to any of us. I know what you've been, I've honored your damnable secrets, forgiven all your trickery, but this, this..."

Angry, her face streaked with dirt and mourning, Belle is fierce enough to conquer armies, and owns every beat of his heart.

"I couldn't. Regina would have known. Belle, my Belle, you're an open book - I've always known your truth, and she would have stolen it. I couldn't."

"All the years, all the suffering, all the...the side-winding deception - it ends here. Now."

"As you said, you know better than most what I am, dearie. The Dark One still lives, and the end of that tale hasn't changed." He tries to blacken the words with a sneer, but knows he hasn't succeeded. The world is wavering at the edges, her face a sweet blur, and he's sliding boneless into the grass.

She's beside him before he can blink, her hand beneath his shirt.

"You're hurt."

"Knives tend to do that." A curl of his lip is all he can manage, and she ignores the gesture, her clever fingers seeking the damage and finding his dagger, freeing it from the sheath beneath his vest.

"What is this? And why haven't you healed yourself?"

"This day has taken its toll, not sure I can summon healing's price, and that...is the instrument of my fate. The Dark One's blade."

The thing is an obscenity in her tender hands, a serpent's tongue of silver bearing his own bitter name. She traces the engraving, doubt and fear clouding her eyes.

"What would you have done, had the Queen not chosen love?"

"Chosen it myself. For you. For Bae. If that blade finds my heart, the Dark One dies with me - the curse would have broken as well."

Her eyes drift shut, and he's forgotten how to breathe, or perhaps death has simply grown tired of waiting - he's run from it so hard, so long.

"Well. Hello, John Wayne."

The horizon is slipping sideways, and Belle, fierce practical Belle, is applying his dagger's wickedness to laces and leather, baring his mottled skin.

"Don't. I don't want you to see me like this..."

"I fell in love with you like this."

She had, she had, and that truth washes over him, cool-water balm. The wound has closed, a blaze of scarlet across his heart, and strength flows into his veins with each hesitant brush of her fingers. Thunder rumbles in the highlands and he tangles a hand in the rags of her muddy blue dress, drags her upward to sway in his arms beneath the fall of apple-scented rain. A flick of his wrist and Belle stands gowned in silver; he's abandoned dragonskin for gold-threaded brocade, for the sake of new beginnings, for Bae.

.

"It's time you met my son."

xxxxxx

Henry hadn't given much thought to the future beyond the curse; he was only ten, after all, and fairytales always stopped at the happy ending - they didn't say anything about the next day. They didn't tell you about what Emma called the "downside," the things grown-ups whispered about in corners. They didn't tell you that happily ever after might come at a terrible price.

He misses Regina.

He remembers, much more than what he'd told Emma, because he wanted her to keep that look in her eyes, of relief and strength and _love_, she was his mother and he loved her, he wouldn't trade that look for pain. But, he remembers, every word Rumpelstiltskin said in that dying forest, everything he saw in the Evil Queen's eyes when she'd made her choice. When she'd chosen him.

Relief, and strength, and _love_.

Henry doesn't have words for it, this ache that has changed him forever. He knows enough to find a place for it, a safe locked box in his heart. It's a part of him now, and maybe someday he'll know how to unlock it and bring the ache out into the light. Because there _is_ light, here, his mother and his friends and a whole new world. A world with magic.

He thinks the boy who is Rumpelstiltskin's son (Rumpelstiltskin's son, how weird is that) might understand; Henry doesn't know his story, not yet, but he will. There are a lot of people here, a lot of chapters, that weren't in the Book. Bae might understand how hard it is to read between the lines, about the shadows hidden in pages bright with gold-leaf and princess gowns, and the love that sometimes lies buried in evil's deep, dark heart.

They're sharing a room (in Snow White and Prince Charming's castle, how cool is that), playing a game that Bae calls "fox and geese" that's an awful lot like checkers. Waiting. Henry hoped that living in the Enchanted Forest didn't mean waiting for adults to make things happen as often as it did in Storybrooke. Emma had brought them dinner, looking like she did when things were happening that she didn't know how to explain.

"_Bae, your father is here, he's safe. He's gone to find Belle, the woman he was with when he found you. She's...important to him."_

"_He loves her. I could tell. But, he's still the Dark One, and everything is different here. I was only gone a few hours, and it's all different." Bae had that face Henry sees in the mirror sometimes, when he's trying to be brave and it really isn't working._

_Emma had touched Bae's hand, knelt beside him on the marble floor. "Your father loves you. I promised him I'd protect you, and I will. Parents...well, sometimes we make mistakes. Big ones. He's spent a long time trying to make up for his, trying to find you. When he comes back, he'll help you understand."_

_His mom had almost managed to look like she believed it, almost, and Henry had hoped Bae didn't notice the tell-tale quiver in her smile._

_She'd taken his own hand then, squeezed it tight. "I have to go - there's a lot to sort out about what happens next. Henry knows the story, better than anyone. Let him tell you what he knows, and then get some sleep."_

Henry did tell him, and Bae filled in some of the gaps. Ogre wars, a village on the edge of the forest, a poor spinner and what he'd done to save his son. Bae told him about the Blue Fairy, and a magic bean that opened the way between the worlds. There was more, Henry could tell, things that hurt too much to say.

They fell asleep as the sunset flared against the western windows, and Henry awoke to see Rumpelstiltskin sitting at the foot of Baelfire's bed. A woman stood beside him, wearing a dress made out of moonlight.

Beauty, and her Beast.

She moved to lean above him, brush his hair back from his eyes.

"I think they need some time alone, and I'm starving. Would you care to help me find the kitchens?"

Henry nodded, and they made their way down torch lit staircases, through glittering high-ceilinged rooms that looked exactly like a fairytale should, until they found a pantry the size of Storybrooke's supermarket. Belle made sandwiches, and they scattered crumbs and watched the moons rise (two of them, we're not in Kansas) from the shelter of a window seat in the empty marble hall. Their whispers echoed against vast ivory walls, as she gave him the unfamiliar names of mountains and the strange stars of this world's sky.

"I'm going to miss peanut butter, and hockey, but I think this is a good place. I think it's going to be okay."

"So do I, Henry. So do I."

He fell asleep against a silk-clad shoulder, and woke for only a moment when her sorcerer found them, spirited him back to his warm bed.

Rumpelstiltskin. How cool was that.

xxxxxx

They commandeer a bedchamber, too weary to move further than a few steps down the stone-tiled hall. Candles flare and a fire kindles with a wave of his right hand; Rumpelstiltkin turns to Belle, and there is one thing left, the final step of a journey five centuries too long.

He's terrified, a coward once more, but her eyes give him the answer and he knows what he must do.

"Kiss me, Belle. This time, I won't run."

Her mouth is warm, and she tastes of summer, of salvation. The kiss lasts a thousand days and nights and he's drifting, drowning in a wailing sea, the Dark One's death throes, a hollow tide of raven's bones. Light filters the darkness above him, a glow that forces him upward, pulls him to the surface, and he's back in Belle's arms, back in his body on solid ground.

It hurts. Everywhere, sparks and cinders, but his leg is whole, his chest, and Belle's eyes are wide with...wonder? Terror? True love's kiss, but it hasn't broken his curse - he can still feel enchantment coursing in his blood, its essence unfamiliar, not fire's burn but ocean cool, flowing blue and silent.

The Dark One's voice is silenced... gone.

"You're... What did we do?" Belle lifts his hand, his human hand, and cradles it to cup her cheek. No green-gold scales, no raptor's claws, but power pulses beneath his skin, shimmering like sunlight on water.

"I still have magic."

xxxxxx

Belle teeters on the precipice of joy and fear, finds her balance in eyes that still glow amber, kisses him once more. She draws Rumpelstiltskin into her arms, croons low and soft against his hair, a song of forever, of choosing him. Belle chooses love, knowing love to be a dragon both dangerous and frail, the guardian of both darkness and light.

She kisses him once more, and the magic responds, a resonant hum blurring all the lines between them, binding them tight with spun-gold music fine as his spindle's strands.

Rumplestiltskin has claimed Fortune's rarest gift, the pearl of a second chance, but the custom of loss leaves him cautious, and his touch has left her wanting.

He's taught her the value of contracts, and it is time to offer a deal.

"I love you, Rumpelstiltskin. But, there must be rules. For power, for compassion. They must be of your own making - I'll not serve as your conscience."

"You'd hoped for a different transformation, from that kiss. An ordinary man." Releasing her, his hands trail flickering blue fire in the lonely space between them and he stills, pain honing the planes of his face.

"No. A man who could love. You."

She smiles when he pulls her beneath him, tugs at her gown's stubborn laces, impatient. Her hands thread his hair, trace the line of his throat, flared wings of bone, and her lips find the hollow between.

"I'm becoming quite the harlot, bedding a different man each day. You're...beautiful, like this."

He's distracted, fumbling to free them both from clothing, but he frowns at her description as he works to bare her skin, part her thighs.

"Not so difficult, to improve on a monster."

"I meant like _this_, so focused, so...hungry. For me."

"I've wanted you since the day I heard your summons, since the day I first..."

_A vision of her family's beleaguered hall - a phantom in gold silk, her shade, scrying desperate maps of warfare, her father's weary face. Breathing a plea, his name...Curiosity, recognition - want, hopeless and deep..._

His mouth has found her breasts, and she arcs into his touch, her body bowline tight.

"I _saw_, myself and my father, I saw myself as you did that day, felt what you felt...oh. Oh."

A curl of lips against her skin, and he's laughing, the sound thrumming against her ribs.

"A gift, love. Hush, let me give you another. Let me."

He doesn't stop talking, his voice rough at her belly, hot, and lower, his tongue and the words and the ghost of his breath, stealing her own. _"...like honey, my Belle, want to drink you down, so sweet...,"_ words she's never heard before, etching spells into her flesh until she shatters, beneath his mouth, beneath his sorcerer's fingers and the candles' teardrop light. Gathering her up, he's still talking, eyes on her face, hands trying to gentle her down - she's soaring, refusing gravity. He's hard against her palm and she urges him in deep, rolls her hips, meets him thrust for thrust, spreads her wings and they're flying together, unbound. Not Gold, not the Dark Castle's master, but lean muscle and bone that is hers and familiar, her name on his lips as he's falling.

Perhaps it's unfair, to choose such a moment, but he's not known for being forthright, her spinner of deals and magic, and she's a woman who lives in the present and has waited far too long.

"Marry me, Rumpelstiltskin. Marry me."

He stops talking.

Levers himself up on his elbows, still inside her, and stares. "You would be...my wife?"

"I would."

"Mother to my son?"

His eyes are dark behind the fall of his hair, silver-foxed silk that ripples like water, damp with his sweat and her own.

"Yes."

"Mistress of my Dark Castle?" A quirk, just there, at the corner of his mouth.

"I'll not be your caretaker."

"My wife."

He's kissing her again, and it tastes of years of longing, years of pain, of 'yes.' A prickle of heat round her finger, and when they break apart, a ring, sapphires and gold and a binding.

"The deal is struck. It's forever, dearie." The imp's ghost flickers in lines bracketing his eyes, and she kisses their spiderweb tracery, the thin scar at his upper lip.

"Forever."

xxxxxx

The council chamber buzzes like an angry hornet's nest, and Snow White's temples throb, her head feeling fit to burst. Rumpelstiltskin stands before them, ramrod straight and hissing fury - he's really not helping matters, not when he's petitioned for what amounts to mercy, a slate wiped clean, a new beginning. Not when memory's return is fresh in their minds.

Still, what he asks is what they need. A new beginning. Hellish as some aspects of Storybrooke had been, it had given them all a different perspective. A world without happy endings and love just out of reach; maybe they would be willing to fight harder for the love and peace of this world. Maybe they would be willing to risk its price.

James rises to his feet, lifts his sword and commands the council's silence - he's both glorious and dear, himself again, and the ache in her head recedes to a dull throb. Rumpelstiltskin gives her a narrow-eyed glance, grazes her sleeve with his fingertips, and the ache disappears completely. He winks - _"remember, dearie, 'twas me that gave true love a push"_ - and she nods, smiles at Belle bold and calm at his side.

Standing on tiptoe to reach her husband's ear, she whispers, and he smiles in agreement. She knows those assembled here will listen - they did take back the kingdom, after all, the two of them together.

"Enough. If we wish to make this world whole again, to make it the place we've dreamed it can be, we must act accordingly. Rumpelstiltskin and his family will have our protection, if he will meet our terms. No harm will come to anyone - and the word 'harm' is not open to any interpretation but that of this council. Is that understood?"

"He still has magic. How can we trust him?" Midas glowers from his far corner, and the Blue Fairy flits above a sea of murmuring assent, hovers near the dais that holds the royal thrones.

"The evil that had no place here is gone - true love has broken his curse, and left something else in its stead."

James runs a hand across his mouth, holding Rumpelstiltskin's dark-eyed gaze. "This...something else. Does it meet with your approval?"

Reul Ghorm, they called her in the Frontlands; an acolyte of this world's wellspring magic, and wed to its safe-keeping. There's a glint of calculation in the Blue Fairy's eyes, the parsing of weakness and strategy.

"Rumpelstiltskin retains the magic of this world; he spent centuries collecting every glimmer he could find, and now love has tethered it fast to his soul. As to my approval - well, that hardly matters. His power's use is up to him. And, perhaps, to you. He'll bear watching. I could-"

"He will be watched - by me, my husband, by his wife and by this council."

The fairy opens her mouth to protest, thinks better of it, and dips her head in acknowledgment. Snow stands shoulder to shoulder with her own wayward prince, and grants Rumpelstiltskin clemency. She knows there will be repercussions, hopes she won't be proven wrong. Watching Belle take his hand to lead Rumpelstiltskin from the throne room, Snow places her faith in the gods of hearth and home, in the love shining clear in the sorcerer's eyes.

xxxxxx

Leaning up, Belle nips sharp at his throat, causes Rumpelstiltskin's steps to weave as they halt outside Baelfire's door. His son, and now hers, a gift from her husband, soon to be; Snow has promised them a wedding, a quiet affair by this world's standards. Belle has sent word to her father in the Frontlands, and he has sent reserved acceptance. There is work to be done, amends to be made, but she knows her father will recognize happiness when he sees it, will wish her joy and good fortune. He will likely need time to wish the same for Rumpelstiltskin, but they have forever, time for all that and more.

"Watching over you, by the royal council's charge - I believe that would that make me your fairy godmother. Do you suppose I'll grow a pair of wings?"

"I'll pluck them from your shoulders the very second that you do."

"I'll lend you my scissors. You must forge your own chains for power. My choice lies in whether or not I find them...tolerable."

He takes her hand, splays her fingers across his chest, starfish pale against dark linen. Sweeps into a bow, and she remembers him at his spinner's wheel, hears the echo of trilling laughter.

"I will strive always, milady, to be tolerable."

"You have enemies who would test your forbearance. Enemies, perhaps, with magic of their own." Belle had not found the Blue Fairy charming, had found a bitterroot tint in her spun-sugar smile, heard sanctimony's flat notes beneath tinkling laughter.

"I'm more worried about my son. I don't know how...I've hurt him, Belle. I'm not sure he can forgive me, not sure I can ever deserve such a thing."

Rumpelstiltskin must find his own way in magic, but in love, she can steady his hand.

"I'll help you to earn it, as will Bae. He loves you."

Lifting her hand, he kisses her palm, the ring on her finger, tastes her heartline's salt with a flick of his tongue.

"I will try to be the man you both deserve."

"And be trying, no doubt - as will I."

"Second thoughts?" A smile dark as sin, and he's a charlatan in this, if not magic, his eyes all false arrogance and doubt...but still, he knows her answer, draws her close.

"No. Not one."

The air around them stills, draws breath, and magic swirls diamonds beneath their feet, rises up to mock the stars.

xxxxxx

_Once upon a time, a spinner of wool became a weaver of dark magic, and lost what he held most dear - his son. The grieving sorcerer became fear's slave, a dragon, whose very name inspired terror._

_Once upon a time, a dragon fell in love, with a maiden whose gift was divining the light only the soul's blackest night can reveal. True Love's kiss can break any curse, but, this is, after all, a fairytale, ancient and dark as such tales should be - and no quest is ever that simple. The spinner scorned love for the sake of fear, and ripped the world apart at its fault lines._

_Once upon a time (because this is, after all, a fairytale), Fate smiled, spun her wheel, and the sorcerer, his son, and the clear-eyed maiden fought their way to a happy ending. Fate grinned wide and red, and left the sorcerer with magic - the kind born of dreams and dust and starlight, but magic just the same. _

_Once upon a time, and now, love and magic always come at a price - but love is the better steward of souls, and the sorcerer has paid love's toll in the coin of blood and tears. A spinner of gold and maker of deals, a husband and a father, he spends his days with laughing children in a castle that welcomes the sun. Aligning himself with kings and queens for the good of all the Forest, he has forsworn the crushing of snails. Rumpelstiltskin wields magic, but with care, discretion: swords that crumble at an enemy's touch, wards against plague, starvation, and locusts - and, the occasional outbreak of boils and maledictions, for those deserving few. This is, after all, a fairytale, as fierce and bright as such tales should be. Beauty fell in love with a Beast, and in love he remains, always, the most dangerous of dragons._


End file.
